aard

While working on some projects involving things like (sometimes unknown) binary protocols via a TTY, or dealing with small binary protocol chunks in other protocol streams I realised that once I can pretty print decoded protocol frames I have half of the emacs implementation ready - and the other way round.

I built a debug framework around that, noticed how useful it'd be to use the same code to sniff and pretty-print communication between the device and the closed client - and added the option to run helpers that forward packets at linespeed, and make them available to emacs at its own pace. At that point I realised that this could be useful as a standalone package, and started ripping it out of that codebase to form lempo as a standalone package.

The screenshot is a pcap bridge helper I've added as simple demonstration of the concept - it's pretty easy to have that as self contained module. The setup in the scratch buffer is because the interactive path for doing that broke a bit when ripping the code out - I should be able to fix that over the next few days, though.

While this currently heavily focuses on binary protocols (and with that, mostly nicely printed hex dumps) doing helper bridges decoding higher level protocols should be easily doable as well.

The current code (with the "I'm still fixing the bits I broke by making it standalone" warning) is at https://github.com/aardsoft/lempo/

This uses the tool support from gptel to let any LLM with tool support

• search my bbdb for contact info
• perform a bbdb search for all contacts with an anniversary field
• use gnus to compose an email

plus a few helper functions to make it useful (like giving it the ability to query the current date).

The tool definition it used in the above screenshot are:

(defun gptel-tool--get-date ()
  "Return the current date"
  (format-time-string "%Y-%m-%d"))

(defun gptel-tool--compose-email (to-address subject text)
  "Open an email compose buffer '*new message*' to to-address with subject subject."
  (gnus-setup-message 'message (message-mail to-address subject))
  (insert (concat "\n" text)))

(defun gptel-tool--bbdb-search (name)
  "Search bbdb for NAME"
  (bbdb-search (bbdb-records) :name name))

(defun gptel-tool--bbdb-search-anniversary (anniversary-type)
  "Search bbdb for anniversary with ANNIVERSARY-TYPE"
  (let ((bbdb-default-xfield 'anniversary))
    (bbdb-search (bbdb-records) :xfield anniversary-type)))

And they get registered with the following code:

      (gptel-make-tool
       :function #'gptel-tool--get-date
       :name  "gptel-tool--get-date"
       :description "Use to get the current date in %Y-%m-%d format. After calling this tool, stop. Then continue fulfilling user's request."
       :category "emacs")

      (gptel-make-tool
       :function #'gptel-tool--compose-email
       :name  "gptel-tool--compose-email"
       :description "Open an email compose buffer and set subject, to-address and body. After calling this tool, stop. Then continue fulfilling user's request."
       :args (list '(:name "to-address"
                           :type string
                           :description "The address to send to")
                   '(:name "subject"
                           :type string
                           :description "The mail subject")
                   '(:name "body"
                           :type string
                           :description "The body text of the email"))
       :category "emacs")

      (gptel-make-tool
       :function #'gptel-tool--bbdb-search
       :name  "gptel-tool--bbdb-search"
       :description "Return a bbdb entry for name, or nil if not found. After calling this tool, stop. Then continue fulfilling user's request."
       :args (list '(:name "name"
                           :type string
                           :description "The name to search for"))
       :category "emacs")

      (gptel-make-tool
       :function #'gptel-tool--bbdb-search-anniversary
       :name  "gptel-tool--bbdb-search-anniversary"
       :description "Return or a specific anniversary type. After calling this tool, stop. Then continue fulfilling user's request."
       :args (list '(:name "anniversary-type"
                           :type string
                           :description "The anniversary to search for, for example 'birthday' for birthdays"))
       :category "emacs")

Screenshots of the UI changes on the Mac - in my opinion it is now just wasting a lot of screen estate for zero benefit.

On non-Macs they're adding an extra usability issue by hiding the top menu bar. I've gove back to 2.7.4 for now - fortunately I had my configuration in git.

Up to 2.7.4:

2.8.4:

Vor ein paar Tagen gabs hier ein Post zu Deutschlandwochen im Lidl in Italien, wo einer aus Schweden und ich mich ueber das Layout gewundert haben.

Jetzt sind auch hier Deutschlandwochen - und anscheinend wurde generell das Packungslayout geaendert - frueher war das alles "Alpenfest", jetzt "taste of deutschland".

Einige Produkte haben sich auch geaendert - z.b. waren die Apfel/Kirsch/Pflaumenkuchen frueher grosse runde Kuchen, jetzt sinds mehrere Teile.

Und Maultaschen sind wieder nicht dabei.

This is OpenDalle with img2img to make an existing picture into a futuristic city.

I took this picture at work a while ago, and it reminded me of cities with brutalist architecture we see in movies now and then, so I tried to get it made into one:

Other interesting attempts:

Forcing it to stay closer to the source made things look more like a highschool cardboard model:

I've finally found a bag which nicely fits almost everything I want to carry every day, and alos makes everything easily accessible - it is about the same size as what I used to carry, but now I no longer need to dump everything out to find what I neede, even with some lose parts still in there.

Contents:

Center:

• 4 empty 64 microSD with SD adapter
• one rpi 2040 with USB-A interface
• headphones
• bag of female jumper cables, with male-male adapters
• a collection of the most used NFC keyfobs

Left side:

• USB-C cable with attached USB-A adapter (USB3, missing on picture)
• two USB-C to headphone adapters
• satechi USB-C power meter
• headphone splitter
• USB-C to SATA adapter
• USB-C smartcart reader
• VGA to HDMI
• USB Ninja (USB-C)
• proxmark3 with battery/bt
• collection of NFC magic cards

Right side:

• USB-C hub with charging port
• miniDP to HDMI
• small USB-C dock
• USB-C to whatever adapters (mini, micro, B, HDMI, ..)
• Chameleon ultra
• MPP pen
• Ninja USB remote
• USB-C to serial, connected via jumper cables

I recently had to add a Mac to my zoo of hardware I'm trying to do productive work on - which prompted me to clean up and document my environment variable importer, which had grown to platform specific functions with lots of code duplication.

On both Windows and MacOS I have properly configured shells with all relevant variables - so it makes sense to query them, instead of duplicating the logic how they create that configuration into Emacs.

On Linux that'd have worked too, but I also have the relevant variables in the systemd user session, and querying that is a tiny bit faster than launching a shell.

I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - it's pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot that'd be rather time consuming.

Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either can't ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.

edit: the high number of replies mentioning "swimming" made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.